Archives: Sep 2009

Note:I’m a columnist for the Reader Weekly, an alt-weekly newspaper in Duluth, MN. Every Monday I post a new column.

I thought it was a spam e-mail at first. “Progress Report for Armando.” But I still looked, because if someone has an awesome name like Armando, I’m 93 percent more interested in whatever they’re selling. If a guy named Chad tried to sell me Viagra, I’d say no because I don’t need it. But with a guy named Armando, I couldn’t help but think it would make my lovemaking a little more Hispanic.

Sadly, the e-mail didn’t address passionate Latin lovemaking at all, and was instead a student’s weekly grade report from a teacher. She had sent it to my e-mail address by mistake. I’m not sure how the parents of a kid named Armando have an e-mail address that in any way resembles “paulryan”, but perhaps the teacher has a drinking problem.

This theory seemed ever the more promising after I responded to alert the teacher to her mistake and she replied with “Ok. Gotca.” I can only assume she meant “gotcha”, as in “I understand what you’re saying and will fix the problem immediately.” Yet in the following weeks, I continued to receive updates on little Armando’s progress.

It was with great sadness that I realized little Armando – gifted with such a legendary name – was perhaps the dumbest student in the history of our great nation. His grades were not those of a child who would soon become the next Benicio Del Toro, as I imagined, but more those of a child who would become the next Jimmy Smits. Just look at these NYPD Blue-esque classroom scores:

I thought little Armando did quite well on the vocabulary quiz until I realized these were scores out of 100. My young prodigy – whom I had never met and might be stabbed by if I did meet – was a total dunce.

Every week I begged and pleaded with the teacher to stop sending me the reports, not because I care about the privacy of others or the lack of beatings his parents could give without concrete numbers, but because I couldn’t bear to see Little Armando ruining an otherwise striking first name. At the rate he was going, I would never feel comfortable buying Viagra through e-mail from anyone.

There was nothing I could do. The e-mails didn’t list the name of the parents or the school, so I couldn’t contact a higher level of authority about the mixup. Since children don’t have their own listing in the White Pages, it would be impossible to find little Armando’s house and stealthily replace the meth lab inside with a large collection of books. My noble cause of helping children I personally believe will be cool someday was stalled.

“Don’t worry,” said my friend Melanie. “That kid’s smarter than you think. He gave the teacher a fake e-mail address so his parents couldn’t see his grades. He’ll probably keep giving her fakes until he finds someone who doesn’t rat him out. That kid’s a genius.”

I found it hard to believe that a “genius” could earn a single digit percentage on a basic vocabulary test, but Drew Barrymore is now a movie director, so I suppose it’s not the stupidest thing that could happen this year. Despite my desire to see little Armando do well, I was still convinced his teacher spent most of her weekly paycheck on Wild Turkey and whichever brand of chewing tobacco goes best with that class of bourbon.

After the fourth straight e-mail, it became clear that little Armando enjoyed treating his academic life, and my dreams, like his own personal toilet. I was fed up. I e-mailed the teacher back and demanded that she either accidentally send me the e-mails of a smarter student with a cool name, or stop sending me e-mails all together.

She seemed surprisingly sober when responding this time, managing to properly spell and punctuate all words. This gave me hope that she had perhaps downgraded her alcoholism from 101 proof rye whiskey to a less damaging addiction to mojito-flavored wine coolers. I’ve always highly recommended this plan, as it worked well for all the teachers in my high school. They never cared, but they were very friendly and usually smelled of mint leaves.

So I no longer receive weekly updates on little Armando’s grades. I have to admit I’m a bit sad about it. He’s moved on to being parented poorly by his actual parents, which I find to be an inferior solution to being parented poorly by me. Either that or he’s now being parented by someone else with a Paul Ryan e-mail address, perhaps even Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan.

On the bright side, I can think of no one with more experience at polishing a turd.

Note:I’m a columnist for the Reader Weekly, an alt-weekly newspaper in Duluth, MN. Every Monday I post a new column.

I live in Hollywood and occasionally work in the entertainment industry. As such, I am required to care about the Emmys. It’s the top awards show for my industry, so not blabbering on endlessly about it would be a form of silent blasphemy punishable by severe beatings. TV studio employees not liking the Emmys is like Hermy from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer preferring dentistry over making toys.

The trouble is, I don’t give half of one shit about the Emmys. It’s four hours, it’s full of sterile jokes that only a 90-year-old could love, and most shows aren’t nominated until at least three years after their prime. I would rather eat Dennis Anderson’s toupee like a steak than watch the Emmys.

Every year the Emmys have millions of viewers for ten minutes, and then seven viewers for the remaining three hours and fifty minutes because everyone else has changed the channel to something more interesting. The host is usually given the blame, but you could make Hitler the host and the show would still be boring. Neil Patrick Harris was very cool and hip, but even he was met with awkward silence after telling the standard safe Emmy jokes, which were written back in the Bob Newhart era.

I’m not saying the Emmys should be full of boobs and explosions, or even exploding boobs, but when people who don’t even like football would rather watch the Cowboys play the Giants, you know something’s seriously wrong. Hell, I was tempted to watch reruns of Sanford and Son instead, and that show’s so old that the footage during the opening credits is literally two minutes of a man pulling a truck into a driveway.

As for the nominations, I can barely even give one-quarter of a shit about them. Rather than being based on what’s great now, nominations are based mainly on what they neglected to nominate in the past. Family Guy got nominated? That’s only about four or five years late. Entourage was nominated, despite having its worst season ever? Okay then. John Slattery was nominated for a season of Mad Men in which he was barely present in most episodes? Sure, why not.

Also, they now give awards to other award shows, which is so monumentally boring and stupid that it makes me want to stab myself in the brain with my own genitalia. I only wish I were physically gifted enough to do so, because that would be a truly legendary way to die. It would be even better than dying on the toilet, like Elvis, or dying while attempting to swallow an entire cucumber whole, like Ronald Reagan.

But perhaps the worst portion of the Emmys is the twenty seven hours of red carpet coverage before the actual show, where people with the enthusiasm – but not the talent – to be famous ask real celebrities questions like, “That’s a lovely dress, what brand of double-sided tape do you use to keep your tits in place?” It is this portion of the show that I can scarcely give any shit about at all. Perhaps one-eighth of one shit, if I push really hard.

Here are a list of things I’d rather watch than the Emmys: A documentary on vasectomies, a seven-hour interview with Kanye West, six straight episodes of The Hills, every Insane Clown Posse music video ever made, the director’s cut of Paris Hilton’s Hottie & Nottie, and last year’s Emmys broadcast.

Sadly, nothing could deter the Emmy faithful in this town. The dumbest people I know all treated the Emmys as if it were a presidential election. Viewing parties were planned with the gusto normally reserved for a wedding. Pop culture bloggers liveblogged the event, not realizing that their vapid readers don’t have the attention span for anything longer than two paragraphs.

It was like a gigantic fart had invaded the city, and no one could make it go away. We waved our hands and covered our noses, but still the stench remained. Even now, nearly a week later, people are still discussing the dress with Barack Obama’s picture on it that one unknown actress wore in a desperate attempt to get noticed. That outfit alone gave me a migraine headache that made my teeth hurt for three days.

Perhaps someday I will watch a tape of this year’s Emmys broadcast. Someday when I’m old and dying and the meds I’m on make me do very silly things. I’ll disrobe and stab the nurse and swallow a fork, and as I lay choking to death on the floor, I’ll use my last breath to pick up a tape of the Emmys and think, “This looks like a fun thing to watch while I wait for the fork to permanently cut off my air supply.” Then, as I watch, I’ll swallow a second fork just to make the grim reaper arrive a little faster.

Note:I’m a columnist for the Reader Weekly, an alt-weekly newspaper in Duluth, MN. Every Monday I post a new column.

It has been brought to my attention that the current month is September. I was unaware of this, because I’m unemployed. After the third or fourth month of not leaving your apartment, your entire world blurs into a mess of Price is Right reruns and various shows where southern people with bad haircuts yell at each other. I only know a full day has passed because I wait for the mailman as eagerly as a golden retriever.

The month of September signals that it’s time for me to write my annual “tips for students” column. This is a fairly pointless exercise in a newspaper that’s only read by aging hippies, but as Harold Macmillan once said, “Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.” I’m not sure who Harold Macmillan was, but Wikipedia says he went by the nickname “Supermac”, and that’s good enough for me.

So again I will cater to all my readers who want to pretend they’re still cool enough to hang out at a college, or worse yet, think I’m still cool enough to hang out with college students without them asking me if I’m there to pick up my son.

Seriously, I’m 30 years old. I should be giving tips to college students like Lindsay Lohan should be giving sermons on celibacy. I haven’t been on a campus in eight years. For all I know, student centers are now run entirely by robots that tutor students while blowing them.

Is that the case? Do you need a student ID to use the robots? Are the robots bolted down really well, or could someone with a wrench quietly remove one and transport it to their home? Also, is the pizza at the commissary still bad? I don’t want to waste money on tuition if the pizza’s still bad and the futuristic blowjob machines are easy to steal.

I’m sorry, where were we? Ah yes, tips for students. Here’s one: Don’t flunk out, or your parents will beat you to death. That’s not a joke. They will actually beat you. You thought they were mad last year when you got drunk and threw up in their laundry hamper, but that’s slightly different than you throwing away $12,000 that they haven’t even paid off yet. If you do flunk out, move to Portland. There are a lot of drugs and jobs for stupid people in Portland.

Tip number two: Don’t molest people when they’re unconscious. I know this seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised by the things people don’t know. When i was a freshman in college, some creepy guy down the hall did that, and things didn’t turn out well for him. People tended to think of him as “rapey” after that. He eventually had to leave and go to school somewhere else. However, this rule doesn’t apply to females. There’s no such thing as an unattractive 18-year-old girl, so they’re generally allowed to touch anyone they want at any time.

Tip number three: Remember that smoking pot won’t actually help you get laid unless you’re smoking it with another person. If you’re toking in your dorm room by yourself and no one’s joining you, you’re doing it wrong. Perhaps you’re the stinky kid on the floor and no one likes you. Maybe you call people “bro” too much. Perhaps that humorous observation you made about Jews has been taken the wrong way. I don’t know. I’m not an expert.

Tip number four: If you have a class that’s particularly difficult, use your laptop or iPhone or tape recorder or dictaphone or personal secretary and record each lecture as you sit in class. You’d be surprised how much it can help. There, I gave a real tip instead of a joke. Happy?

If you don’t have a personal secretary, wait until your friends get drunk and take pictures of them doing embarrassing things. Then you will have a personal secretary.

Tip number five: If anyone in the dorms has an HDTV, you should marry them. Their parents are obviously very generous, and if you date them, they might give you awesome things too.

Special tip for St. Scholastica students: Don’t punch the nuns. It pisses off Jesus.

Tip number six: Anytime someone runs into your room at 1am and excitedly yells, “Hey wanna go (insert event here)?” you should say yes. Especially if said event involves alcohol, shaving cream, cartons of eggs, fireworks, or all four items at once.

Tip number seven: Don’t sleep with your Resident Advisor. The whole reason they became an RA is because they think it will help them sleep with freshman. They probably have AIDS.

Final tip: Enjoy yourself as much as possible in the first two years of college. Once you become a junior, professors will expect you to actually work hard, and by the time you’re a senior you’ll be so ready to leave that you won’t enjoy it. But for now, enjoy writing on your sleeping roommate’s face with a marker, pressing your exposed buttocks against glass windows in the cafeteria, and other heinous acts. For the next two years, you are officially allowed to be obnoxious with no repercussions.

Note:I’m a columnist for the Reader Weekly, an alt-weekly newspaper in Duluth, MN. Every Monday I post a new column.

On a recent trip to Duluth, Darlene Pooburn parked in a Canal Park lot that serves Caribou Coffee. Pooburn and some friends got drinks at Caribou and went to a few gift shops, returning before the hour was up.

They were stunned to find a fat guy sitting on the hood of their car.

“Gimme $80 and I go away,” said the man, in between loud belches.

When Pooburn refused, the man laid across her hood, spread eagle, and again reminded her that she couldn’t leave until she paid him.

“I’m fat, gimme $80 or I no let you leave,” said the man, a loud fart vibrating through the hood of the vehicle. She had no choice but to pay the man.

Pooburn isn’t alone in this experience. Since the city eliminated free parking in Canal Park three weeks ago, an unseemly fat guy has been sitting on cars in earnest, generating complaints from tourists and locals alike.

Every day brings new victims. Minutes after Melanie Felcher parked her van in the lot last week, her car was targeted. She was unaware that as she walked away, a fat guy slipped onto her hood and began eating a hoagie. It all happened in a matter of seconds, at lightning-fast speed.

A passing police sergeant told her there was nothing he could do, because it’s a private lot. Even after Felcher paid the fat guy, he still refused to leave until he was done with his hoagie. Watching him eat it – and then remove his shirt after the meatballs and sauce dribbled onto his clothing – was one of the most horrifying experiences of her life.

“It’s so upsetting, because there’s nothing you can do,” said Felcher. “The police can’t force him to move because he’s on private property, and also because he’s so goddamn fat. And you can’t drive your car with him on it. His weight, though unsightly, gives him tremendous balance. It’s actually quite impressive. You can’t get him off the hood, even after hours of trying. Even if I managed to drive all the way home, I’d still have the same fat guy sitting on my car when I woke up the next morning. His tenacity is unmatched.”

The fat guy says he’s merely following orders from Blockhead Properties, the company that owns the lot. They hired him this month after complaints that too many non-customers were parking there. But lately, even real customers have been targeted. If they leave a business and don’t immediately return to their vehicle, the fat guy sits on their car.

“That lady, she nice lady right now,” said the fat guy, pointing to a woman eating at the Dairy Queen, a business the lot supports. “I no sit on her car. But that bitch goes to gift shop across street, she be sorry.”

The fat guy also noted that the lot has signs warning people about him sitting on their car. Small signs posted in various locations around the lot say, “Parking for Caribou Coffee, Dairy Queen, Northern Lights Books, and ICO Convenience only. All others will have their car sat on by the fattest guy we know.”

The owner of the Dairy Queen seems to be the most vigilant supporter of this policy. While he allows his customers to take short walks on the Lakewalk after buying food, they’re required to let him go along, and must hold hands with him the entire time.

Other businesses have been more forgiving. Grandma’s Restaurant considered hiring a fat guy to sit on cars, but instead decided that not being jerks was a better way to serve customers.

The fat guy charges $80 to stop sitting on a vehicle, but $160 if the vehicle owner shouts profanity or ethnic slurs at him. He says his policy is very generous, as it allows people who pay $160 to shout as many ethnic slurs at him as they’d like. He does not charge by volume. The fat guy has also been considerate to those who don’t have enough money with them.

“I didn’t have $80,” said Pooburn, “but the fat guy called one of his friends to drive me to an ATM so I could withdraw the cash. It was nice of him. Most thieves aren’t so accommodating to their helpless victims.”

Madeleine Albright, the owner of the Caribou Coffee, isn’t so convinced of the fat guy’s generosity, saying he has adversely affected their business.

“The perception is that it’s our fat guy,” said Albright. “He’s not ours. We have not hired a fat guy, nor would we ever.”

“Wait, that didn’t come out right,” added Albright. “We are an equal opportunity employer. We hire people of all shapes and sizes at our business, just not to sit on cars.”

Some citizens in Duluth have attempted to hire their own fat guy to preemptively sit on their car while in Canal Park. Frank Mandles says it works, and now it only costs him $40 to drive downtown and get a coffee.

“It seems crazy, paying one fat guy $40 to sit on my car so some other fat guy who charges $80 won’t,” said Mandles, “but whatever works. I’m far too lazy to do something sensible, like stop using businesses that treat me like crap.”